There Will Be No 'Negotiations' [The Great Carpenter Ant War]

The Ender

i just rented a nice & cheap place from a very friendly landlord. For a time, peace flourished within my (leased) walls.

Then came the carpenter ants. At least five of them today, and no doubt many more tomorrow. This is in clear violation of the 'No Fat Bitey Bugs In Here' treaty drafted this morning in non-washable markers by myself, and signed by both myself & the queen of the carpenter ant colony (there are lies being spread about the queen's signature being a crude forgery. Do not believe the lies).

Clearly these ants cannot be trusted. War is my only option.


...Okay, so I've basically just crushed five of these bastards with scrap paper today, but obviously manual crushing of expendable foraging drones isn't a good permanent solution. Does anyone know if the good 'ol Borax + Icing sugar method works on carpenter ants? (yes, I'm aware that this is cruel. I do not care. This is war!) If not, is there an alternative bait solution that will likely kill the colony?

KafkaAU

Some ants go for sugar, others for meat. If the sugar isn't working, and you don't have any pets, try a small amount of mince mixed with the borax. If you've got pets, you'll need to rig some elaborate anti-pet device.

The Ender

No pets to worry about here.

My deputized Minister of Mandible Defense, ALICE, seems to concur that an escalation to chemical weaponry is the only way forward (while chiding her own work ethics. Her humbleness is what really garnered her the appointment):




Has anyone has personal experience with carpenter ants before? I mean, if they eat wood, are they going to go for sugar or mincemeat? Should I be trying to bait them with a tasty piece of particle board?

Salvation122

I used to work for Terminix, so I have some small authority in this area.

Carpenter ants are a fucking pain in the ass to get rid of. Carpenter ants don't care about sugar, as they eat cellulose. You basically have to treat them directly, and keep treating them for a while, and constantly scour the property for signs of them. If this is the first time you've seen them, and you've only seen a couple, that's a good sign. They are also incredibly, incredibly destructive. You should let the landlord know - he'll probably pay a professional to deal with it, since carpenter ants can totally fuck up a wood-frame building to the tune of several tens of thousands of dollars, depending on where they are in the structure. (I once got a call from a guy that found a colony in a load-bearing beam; after the couple grand we charged him to deal with it, he ended up basically having the entire top of his house torn off and replaced.)

I'd recommend trying to trap a couple in a jar or something so when the exterminator comes out he knows exactly what he's dealing with.

The Ender

Carpenter ants are a fucking pain in the ass to get rid of. Carpenter ants don't care about sugar, as they eat cellulose.

Dear God. Our battle plans are all out the window. ALICE, advise me!




Thanks for the heads-up, Sal. I'll contact the landlord tomorrow.

sys64738

Carpenter ants don't actually _eat_ cellulose, though they do chew wood to bore out galleries to live in (satellite colonies). Baiting works about 50% of the time so don't bet the farm on it. They tend to be a lot more destructive in cooler climates than warmer (ie, if it commonly freezes in the winter they will see your walls as a good place to live). Usually carpenter ant colonies in a house are either foragers from outside or belong to a satellite colony. The main colony - where the queen lives - can be quite a ways off (I've heard up to 200 yards or so). The best way to get rid of them is to treat the main colony, but since that's frequently a huge pain in the ass to find you'll prolly just need to concentrate on making your house a sucky place to live for for satellite colonies. Fix water leaks/drips, replace water-damaged wood, plug holes in the outside of the house to minimize entry into the home, etc. It's a pain to do it right.

All in all, letting your landlord handle it is probably the best idea as a professional pest treater will (hopefully) have the equipment and knowhow to deal with them.

zepherin

and to keep them from annoying you, bleach where you see them coming in. Bleach kills well everything, but it destroys their sent trails.

Also I love the way you phrased your posts Ender.

Noisymunk

I second Salvation's advice. Escalate to Landlord level, get a professional exterminator involved.

Liquid Hellz

They are probably looking for water. Make sure you have no leaky pipes/faucets or standing water anywhere.. or wet wood. We went on vacation and came home to hundreds dead in the toilet one time. The way we got rid of them completely was to kill their home, which was an old stump in the backyard. My advice is to locate their home and destroy it... they like wood.

TheKoolEagle

the only obvious answer is to locate their shamehole that they live in and create a bleach gas to spray into your walls. This plan cannot go wrong.

seriously though talk to your landlord and he will probably be on board for an exterminator before it gets out of hand.

grouch993

Ants follow scent trails, so try and watch where they are traveling and wipe that path down with bleach.

There are some different poisons you can use if you are so inclined.

Also watching Them! might help.

Noisymunk

grouch993 wrote: »

Ants follow scent trails, so try and watch where they are traveling and wipe that path down with bleach.

There are some different poisons you can use if you are so inclined.

Also watching Them! might help.

Don't destroy the scent trails if you're calling an exterminator. It makes it harder for them to figure out where the ants are coming from.

Darkewolfe

Your landlord has an ongoing interest in not having carpenter ants destroy his shit. Offer him the chance to deal with this, because even if you try to do it yourself, he's going to want to be aware that pests are destroying his property.

MrDelish

This reminded me of the aunts thread:

SOMOENEELSE wrote:

Sir Carcass wrote:

God I hate these fucking things. We've got them in our house getting into anything they can find. Right now they seem to enjoy finding our cats food dish, regardless of where we move it. They also seem to have no lack of ways to get in and out of the house. I find the point where they're coming out of the wall and spray it, and they just find somewhere else.

I really wish we could afford an exterminator, but that's looking about $450, which we just can't afford. Do you have any tips on getting rid of aunts? There aren't any beds outside that I can see. I imagine they're living in one of our trees, if not inside the house itself. I'm thinking of getting some bait traps, but I have no idea if they work or not. Any experience or brands to suggest?

I don't know what kind they are. They're smallish and kind of a dark brown color. They form lines and obviously like catfood. They also like walking on our plastic cups, which may have something to do with our dishwashing detergent. Maybe.

Christ, your family is insane. If they were living in my trees I'd be more than happy to pay someone $450 to exterminate them.

Making sure there are no beds outside was a good first step to getting rid of them, do anything you can to make sure they are not comfortable out there, that should help make them go back home faster. I would also suggest changing the locks and making sure your doors and windows are locked. If they are coming in through cracks in the wall, as you suggest, maybe try to leave some really fattening food out, they're far too skinny if they can slip through cracks in the wall. As you said they are short and brown, and are apparently very skinny, are your aunts from somalia?Maybe get some generic canned cat food, too, so that at least if your weird family insists on sneaking in and eating it, it's really disgustingly nasty.

The Ender

Well, my landlord's reaction was more or less



Exterminators have been called.

Now we are all sons of bitches.

mts

old school windex with ammonia works really really well at wiping out ant trails.

Sir Carcass

MrDelish wrote: »

This reminded me of the aunts thread:

SOMOENEELSE wrote:

Sir Carcass wrote:

God I hate these fucking things. We've got them in our house getting into anything they can find. Right now they seem to enjoy finding our cats food dish, regardless of where we move it. They also seem to have no lack of ways to get in and out of the house. I find the point where they're coming out of the wall and spray it, and they just find somewhere else.

I really wish we could afford an exterminator, but that's looking about $450, which we just can't afford. Do you have any tips on getting rid of aunts? There aren't any beds outside that I can see. I imagine they're living in one of our trees, if not inside the house itself. I'm thinking of getting some bait traps, but I have no idea if they work or not. Any experience or brands to suggest?

I don't know what kind they are. They're smallish and kind of a dark brown color. They form lines and obviously like catfood. They also like walking on our plastic cups, which may have something to do with our dishwashing detergent. Maybe.

Christ, your family is insane. If they were living in my trees I'd be more than happy to pay someone $450 to exterminate them.

Making sure there are no beds outside was a good first step to getting rid of them, do anything you can to make sure they are not comfortable out there, that should help make them go back home faster. I would also suggest changing the locks and making sure your doors and windows are locked. If they are coming in through cracks in the wall, as you suggest, maybe try to leave some really fattening food out, they're far too skinny if they can slip through cracks in the wall. As you said they are short and brown, and are apparently very skinny, are your aunts from somalia?Maybe get some generic canned cat food, too, so that at least if your weird family insists on sneaking in and eating it, it's really disgustingly nasty.

I'm preeeeetty sure he edited my post to be funny, but I'm too lazy to check.

But yeah, I don't know whatever happened with those a(u)nts. We got some bait traps and saw less of them, but moved out about a year later and never looked back. We have regular pest control and haven't had any problems. Though ironically enough we've started seeing ants in this current place (that we've lived in for over 7 years now) about 1.5 months before we close on the new house we're buying (our first). Not our problem.

Man, that was a long time ago. I don't remember when I posted that, but it had to be before 2006. Stupid ants.

ceres

I actually remember SOMEBODY making that spelling error at some point and the subsequent jokes. I've been doing this long enough that it could have been, but I might be thinking of something more recent.

I think Delish needs to link for proof.

Sir Carcass

MrDelish

As Tube is my witness, proof is impossible. The original thread no longer exists, it seems, and Tube's link in that thread does not work.

ceres

Pheezer quoted it further down: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/76727/#Comment_76727

The thread itself is gone, but the misspelling was in the title.

Sir Carcass

That thread used to be in the Archives, but I guess it got cleaned out. I was surprised to see it there while browsing it one day. I think I had missed his post originally, or had lost the thread completely and never saw it. It was a pretty good post, though.

Hah, I don't remember having misspelled the title, which would make sense. I think he did change the spelling in his quoted post, though. Either way, good times.

Stupid aunts.

Nosf

We have/ had carpenter ants. There's some problems with the house, but I can tell you we mopped the back floor more often and that helped, but bait and such didn't work for shit. I paid ... someone to come out and spray the interior walls and the outside of the house, they come in the spring and the fall and it worked great. I've accepted that I'll have to spray each year until we can do some renovation work in the back where ahem, some dumbass previous owner has sunk wooden walls into the dirt instead of onto concrete footings.

Oh, the company we used was Abell btw, dunno if they operate in your area.

Erios

You'd think, given your user name, that you'd have more expertise in the realm of exterminating bugs. :P

Seems like escalation is necessary.